Story Highlights

Bees communicate through the motion of their wings and the swaying of their bodies. They can convey the location of a food source in seconds. Their ability to dance a message was one of the first feats that fascinated Ray McClure.

“I had a friend and (beekeeping) was his hobby,” McClure said. “He started telling me about their abilities. They’d do a little dance. If they find an apple tree blooming, the first bee goes there and gets nectar, then returns to dance in the dark hive. The other bees can watch and find the tree in a matter of moments.”

Every decade, beekeepers and experts studying bees find more of their abilities to do things that are unexplainable from a human standpoint, McClure said.

“This time of year, the worker bee only lives six weeks. How good would you be if had only a six-week career,” he said. “Honeybees work inside the hive for a week at one job and then the second week, another. Everybody is a specialist.”

One bee flies out and loads up with pollen and nectar, but when he returns, it is up to other bees to unload them, “because they know what’s going on in hive and what’s needed,” McClure said. “The nectar is the future honey. The pollen is pure protein, so they store that in different locations in the hive. Some go get water, others seek out sap to fill in small holes to keep waxworms out of the hives. I had a hive with too big an entrance and within three days, they built barriers so only a bee could get in through that circle. The four essentials for a hive are water, sap, nectar and pollen.”

Finding a new home

A bee swarm usually will not stay in a tree long.

“They have 10 to 30 scouts our searching and they will be on the move the next day,” he said. “Rarely, would they spend more than just one day in the tree after swarming. The scouts come back and communicate with 30,000 bees about finding a neat place, big enough and with a nice entrance. A few minutes later, they all are at your house. The scouts still out looking that return to find the hive gone, will follow the pheromones (the other bees) put out. The complexity is absolutely amazing. There is no boss in hive. It is one large organism. The queen doesn’t direct the action, all she does is lay eggs.”

When buying bees, they come in one package with the box, usually for about $350, McClure said. A hobby beekeeper might see 30 pints of honey a year. It is not a lavish business.

Plant close to hive

To prolong their lives of their bees, keepers like to position the boxes for a short haul to a food source, he said. After six weeks, their wings fray.

“For anyone interested in keeping bees, there are quite a few things that can be grown locally in our own yards, so that the bees don’t have to fly so far,” McClure said. “Their life span is based on number of hours they fly. The wings split and they are unable to get back to the hive. I’ve seen them walking trying to get back.”

“You can plant fruit trees, because all of the fruit trees provide nectar and pollen. Red hot pokers are good, as is spirea, a shrub that puts off a brilliant purple bloom this time of year. One bush will keep 100 bees busy for six weeks. Russian sage is another. It provides a lot of nectar. The more you have in your yard, the less your bees have to fly to get the nectar.”

The bees don’t seal the honey until the moisture content is low.

“It is amazing,” he said. “They know when to seal it. The honey will ferment if is is not cured out – again, the complexity.”

Preparing honey

“When you take out the combs, you judge not to take too much (because it is a food source for the hive), and you can supplement with sugar water during the winter,” he said. “We don’t extract too much honey until after a frost. The day after a frost, you need 100 pounds including the weight of the box for them to survive the winter. I have sugar water and feeders for every hive. They can convert it into honey.”

Agriculturalists bring in bees to pollinate crops. To accommodate that demand, McClure bought a trailer that he outfitted with a top and higher sides to bear-proof. He keeps three hives at the garden at the Smokey Ranger District Office in Ruidoso, and per hive, they produced more honey that his boxes in other areas of town, he said.

McClure doesn’t sell through stores, only directly to maintain the benefits of the product. Companies selling large quantities tend to boil the honey to prevent it from turning into granules. But heating to 160 degrees removes the enzymes, which are a natural aid to digestion, he said.

“Raw unprocessed really does make a difference” in honey selection, he advised.

Buying local honey can be good for those with juniper allergies, because the honey contains small doses of pollen from that tree and some people can build up a tolerance. Junipers are most prolific pollen producers in spring and fall.

Africanization of bees

The state hasn’t tested a bee in New Mexico in the last 10 years that didn’t have some African genes, McClure was told based on information from a county extension agent a few years ago. African bees are more aggressive and have been blamed for human and pet deaths.

“When hives swarms, the old queen leaves with about half the bees and a new queen stays,” he said. “The old queen is very susceptible to being eaten by birds, because she’s large and her wings are smaller. She can’t fly as well and she is twice as long. She looks a little like a wasp.

“The day of her virgin flight, she may breed with 19 to 21 drones in one day. One of those will be an Africanized, so the bees here are about 10 percent Africanized. Not pure, because they can’t take the winters. They get them in lower elevation such as Las Cruces, Alamogordo and Carlsbad, where it doesn’t get as cold and they can live all year.”

A honeybee 20 percent Africanize can be “a little bit on ornery side. More aggressive than the gentle honeybee in southern states,” McClure said.

“If a hive gets too mean, we kill the queen and replace her with a gentle queen, which cost about $35 a piece,” he said. “That calms them down, but once they swarm, that queen leaves and the new one could be 10 percent Africanized, so it is a constant battle. They are a little meaner than they were years ago.”

The sting

A bee that stings when older has stronger venom, which apparently builds up in is body, McClure said. The human body’s reaction to the venom may change over repeated exposure.

“When I was younger, I could be stung and not swell,” McClure said. “One time, I accidently dropped a box of 30,000 bees and was stung 100 times and an hour later, you couldn’t tell. But now, certain parts of my body will swell.”

Persons interested in becoming a beekeeper as a hobby and looking for some guidance can contact McClure at 575-937-5023.